Hi,
would it be possible to add an argument 'flush' to read.table(), which
is passed as internal scan(..., 'flush=flush') calls?
BACKGROUND:
The microarray image analysis software QuantArray, sometimes generates
tab-delimited files that contain data rows with trailing and obsolete
TAB's (for unknown reasons). Then number of TABs are unknown on before
hand, and may vary. These files do have a header, which defines the
number of "target/wanted" columns.
SOLUTION:
If one add 'flush=FALSE' to the list of arguments and passes
'flush=flush' to the "data <- scan(..., flush=flush)" call, that is, the
scan call that reads the data table, files like the above can be read
correctly.
From ?scan, we have:
flush: logical: if 'TRUE', 'scan' will flush to the end of the line
after reading the last of the fields requested. This allows
putting comments after the last field, but precludes putting
more that one record on a line.
Removing the last sentence, this would be in line with the above
suggestion.
Is this a wanted update to read.table()? Comments?
Cheers
Henrik